History

(TW: Underage Drinking and Suicide Attempt)

Enzo is the fruit of a torrid relationship between a captain of the Italian Army, his father, Massimo, and a Frenchwoman, his mother, Jeanne. The couple’s love blossomed as Italy suffered with then-historic levels of tension; there was a lot of resentment towards foreign meddling, and such ire fueled the Risorgimento, a movement that sought to reunify Italy. Massimo left to fight right after installing Jeanne in his beach manor in Syracuse around 1867, months prior to Enzo’s birth. The captain thought he would soon meet his son.

He didn’t.

Massimo died on September 20th, 1870, during the taking of Rome and the Papal States.

After losing her husband, his clout of protection, and detecting growing disdain against foreign people in her village, Jeanne decided to flee Italy altogether.
A strenuous boat trip took her back to her birthplace. Only child and with no close relative, Jeanne had to fend for herself to survive.
She found a community of kind souls in a Paris’ slum where she and her newborn son shared a single room with two other families.

Jeanne took on many menial jobs to gather what little money she could.
Meanwhile, Enzo got to grow up surrounded by artists and gentle hustlers; despite what little money they all had; their lives were always a party.

The nights were long, rhymed by poets, singers, and jesters; salons of reading were frequent; there’s always a bottle of wine or a keg of beer; and they shared it all: wine, bread, beds, thoughts, and dreams.

At thirteen, Enzo was fully experiencing all the perks of this life, including partaking in some wine drinking.
Jeanne was quite liberal, except when it came to the little man’s studies.
She was the one who arranged the tutoring with Monsieur Noé, a retired professor from a neighboring tenement.
The old man taught all the basics to Enzo.

Yet true enlightenment came in the form of a bourgeois painter, a few years Enzo’s senior, Louis G. Bénoliel.
They met as Enzo (15) strutted back from Mr. Noé’s home.
Louis became obsessed with Enzo’s facial features; he asked to draw them. Enzo fell under the painter’s spell right there and then. From that day on they became devoted to each other. Louis designed Enzo as his “muse,” and in between painting sessions, they would spend whole afternoons at Louis’ studio; lying on the rug, Louis would read Shakespeare aloud to Enzo.
Their involvement, although never carnal, marked a shift in young Enzo; it was the birth of his hunger.

When Louis announced his engagement to an aristocratic heiress, things went awry quickly. Enzo accused Louis of being distant and threw what can only be described as jealousy tantrums.
Things reached a boiling point when Enzo attempted suicide with pills stolen from Mr. Noé. Louis managed to save his muse and decided to step back; he said his goodbye by letter, called off the engagement with the heiress, and moved to the countryside.

Following the advice from friends who had done the same years prior, Jeanne decided to take a chance and move to London. Enzo welcomed the change of air.

Upon arrival, things didn’t change much. Mother and son struggled, counting every single penny, living in a tiny, rotten place. It all changed when Enzo got a job, his first ever, as a Telegram Messenger.

And then, out of the blue, one night he stayed out until pretty late and came back home with more money, telling his mother it was his earnings from betting.
The scene repeated itself night after night again… Suddenly, the duo was living at a much nicer place—nothing posh, just a decent small apartment in South London.

Jeanne doesn’t have a reason to think her son, her “petit chevalier,” lies to her.

As his mother lives her life oblivious, Enzo goes out every night and allows himself to do and be done to any and everything until someday another man looks at him the way Louis looks at him or the day Louis comes back (they resumed contact through letters; it was the painter who reached out first) to reclaim Enzo, his heart, his love, and his now used body.